Sunday, January 19, 2014

This year the majority of my 3-year old articulation students have a little final consonant deletion going on. Not surprising, I know. Well, I've been plugging away at getting them to mark those final consonants and they're doing great! Next step? I pulled out the FCD story from Read Aloud Minimal Contrast Stories With Activities from Super Duper. This one is about a monkey who finds all sorts of strange things in her mailbox. I got the story printed for my group and grabbed some markers. And then it occurred to me...Hey! I have a monkey! I got him with my Talk it, Rock it (formerly Kids Express Train) CDs. Wait a minute! I also have a mailbox! (Thanks Target Dollar Spot!) My kids had a blast making the monkey look in the mailbox for their target words!

Don't you love it when your therapy plan ends up being even better than you had planned?? Have you ever planned something and had it transform into something even better?

Saturday, January 11, 2014

So I have recently been introduced to Jamberry Nails. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed this! :) Have you heard of them? Jamberry wraps are heat activated vinyl wraps that adhere to your fingernails (as well as gel, acrylic, shellac, etc.) and last on your fingernails for up to 2 weeks and your toenails for up to 6 weeks! They do not chip like polish and there's no drying time! Did you notice I said "heat activated"?? Here's the official Jamberry Application Video. FYI, I skip the cuticle oil. I found that my nails started to lift at the cuticles the one time I did use it. I also do a slightly different removal process (see below).

This was my first attempt at applying them:

Way neater than I ever could have done with polish! BTW, I almost NEVER polish my nails! I'm just terrible at it! Also, when I was little, I used to bite my fingernails. My mother told me "If you bite your nails, they'll never grow long!" So, I started biting/picking at my cuticles instead, lol! This is a horrible habit to have and nail polish remover is just plain painful! Anywho, I've tried nail "stickers" before, but none have lasted as long as the Jamberries!

This is the next wrap I chose, just in time for the holidays! How cute are the candy canes???

I loved these so much, I did them twice! Here's the 2nd set on day 14, and after I broke 2 nails cleaning the house:

Not bad, huh? You can see some nail growth, but they still look awesome! On day 14, though, I was hosting a demo at my house and wanted to show my guests how I remove my "jams." I don't have pictures, but basically I dip my fingertips in a small bowl of olive oil (about 1 1/2 - 2 Tbsp) and work the oil under the wrap from the cuticle to the tip. No Chemicals! I totally love that!

This "Jamicure" has been on my hands for about a week now. I'm not typically one to "mix-and-match" patterns, but I really like this combination!

I have to add something speech related to this post...My preschoolers love the patterns! They've been a conversation starter since I've started wearing them. Some of my kids are even paying more attention when I point to things, lol!

So why am I telling you about Jamberry? Well, I love them so much, I decided to become a consultant! I started this blog and my TPT store, not as a way to make money, but as a way to share my ideas with the rest of you. I have been SOOO fortunate to make a little bit of money from my TPT store and I am unbelievably thankful to each of you who has made purchases! A few years ago, my husband went back to school.

The short version of a long story is that, to supplement our income while he's in school, I have been thinking about joining a direct sales company (e.g., Pampered Chef, Thirty-One) for a while now and along came Jamberry! Talk about right place, right time! I can host virtual Jamberry parties right on Facebook with my son in the same room!

If you're interested in hosting a party right on Facebook, January is the perfect time to do so! Check out the AWESOME bonus hostess rewards for January! I still have a few spots left, so email me if you're interested (I'm using cmanchester1@yahoo.com for Jamberry related emails)

I'm so excited about this new venture! I'm going to do a giveaway because I believe that once you try Jamberry, you'll love it as much as I do! I'm giving away a half sheet of nail wraps! Each wrap is meant to be used on 2 fingers (right hand, left hand). I cut them down the center, but if you have short nails, you can get up to 2 manicures out of this sheet (right side of wrap, left side of wrap, center of wrap)! The wraps I have available are pictured above (Midnight Celebration, White Stars on Pink, Heartstrings, Sealed With a Kiss, Dizzy Blue, and Cool Blue Sparkle). Enter using the Rafflecopter below!

Friday, January 10, 2014

BRRR! It's been so cold all over the country this week that I bet even in the south kids are wearing winter clothing they've never seen before! This week in my speech room, we've been doing activities related to MITTENS! Here's the run-down:

The Mitten:

In many of my groups, we read "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. Who doesn't love this book?!? Believe it or not, I drew the animals from the story when I was in college (in the mid to late 90's) and they are STILL hanging in there! This still shocks me because I didn't even think of laminating them at the time!

Here's a closer look:

We worked on sequencing the order in which the animals went into the mitten and I found this printable emergent reader take-home book from Jamie Mayas on Teacher's Pay Teachers. What a great way for my preschoolers to practice the vocabulary from the book!

Noisy Story:
In some other groups, we read the Noisy Story "The Mitten." (Click HERE to see more information on the Noisy Stories program). This story is about a lost mitten. I begin the story by wearing one mitten and telling the kids that I'm going to tell them a story about something you can wear in the winter. Believe it or not, they don't ALL clue in that the story will be about a mitten! Once they do figure it out, I tell them that there is a BIG problem in the story (mind you, I'm still wearing ONE mitten). Eventually someone infers that there is a missing or lost mitten in the story...

At the end, the mitten is found on a snowman! My preschoolers love when I pull out my snowman (above) with the mitten stuck to his belly. (Sometimes they make me feel like a magician!) The younger kids worked on same/different using real mittens (see photo below) as well.

I have rounded up a ton of mittens over the years. I usually pick them up at the end of the winter in a clearance bin. We focused on the "eye" bead of the EET strand and described what the mittens look like.

I don't know if I mentioned this before or not, but I'm doing my Student Learning Goal for my Educator Evaluation on the EET. Based on my mid-year data, my kids are just NOT getting the eye bead! Here's an example of a very typical response from my kiddos during mid-year data collection:

Me: What's this?Student: A carrot.Me: Right! {shows green bead}Green-group. What group does a carrot belong in?Student: Food group.Me: Nice! {shows blue bead}Blue-do. What do you do with a carrot?Student: You eat it!Me: You're doing great! {shows eye bead} Eye ball! What does a carrot look like?Student: It looks like a carrot!Me: {face-palm!}

We spent about 2 weeks on describing appearance, but I guess we need some more time with that! So, we grabbed the EET strand and worked on describing the appearance of the mittens. If you don't have a ton of mittens like I do, you can always make them out of paper.

I used a pattern similar to the one below and printed them on letter size scrapbook paper, then cut them out.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Throughout the year and half that I've been blogging, I've made some pretty amazing friends along the way! When I started this journey, my main goal was to "give back" to the field. I've found and used some awesome materials that have made my practice more fun and my planning much easier and I wanted to do the same for other SLPs. I never would have imagined how close I would have become to other SLP bloggers, but I'm happy to count so many of them as friends!

In fact, a few of us got together and decided to do a Secret Santa gift exchange! My Secret Santa was Maureen from The Speech Bubble! Here's what I got:

A gift set from Crabtree & Evelyn in one of my all-time favorite scents - Pomegranate! And...

...How cute is this SLP wreath?!?! I've seen burlap wreath tutorials on Pinterest and have always wanted to do one! I was so excited to see how this one made by my crafty Secret Santa came out! I'm definitely taking this one to work, but I may just need to try to make one for home!

Thank you so much Maureen! I LOVE my gifts!!! <3

I had Jessica from Consonantly Speaking. If you don't know Jessica, she is a HUGE Lego fan and she's getting married soon! I found these cute Wedding Legos at Amazon and I thought she and her fiance would get a kick out of them! While searching Amazon, I came across these Speech-ified Legos that I thought were pretty fun too!

Did you do a secret santa exchange at work or with friends? What was your favorite gift (that you got or that you gave)?

Thursday, January 2, 2014

I hope everyone had a fantastic ending of 2013 and I wish you nothing but wonderful things for 2014! If you are back to work this week and need something quick to do with your kiddos, here's a simple worksheet...

First we talked about our time away from school and I asked the kids to tell me about their Christmas (for the ones who celebrate). Inevitably, this lead to a discussion about their presents, so I had each child tell me about their favorite gift and the reasons they liked the gift. Finally, they drew a picture of the gift.

Here are some examples:

I did this with preschool kids, so I wrote in their answers. If you work with older children, you can have them write their own responses. You can download a copy of the worksheet HERE.

I work as a school based speech-language pathologist in New Bedford, MA. I work primarily with students in preschool and kindergarten. I'm also the mom of a very sweet little boy who takes up much of my free time.